The present event is an installation based on the video footage of the theatrical performance “Play IMT (4) – Playground,” a performance which occupied the entire exhibition space of the Intermediatheque for the first time.
In October 2014, the University Museum, the University of Tokyo (UMUT) and SEAMI initiated their collaborative theatrical project “Play IMT” staged at the Intermediatheque. As a part of this project, the experimental performance “Playground,” focusing on the ludic connotation of the title word, took place in April 2016. Ever since the conception of the “Play IMT” project, by integrating the Intermediatheque collection and activities as well as people who gather there within the process of theatrical creation, we have consistently explored what kind of theatrical expression can be crystallized within a museum space. In the last performance, we attempted to create a site-specific form of bodily expression, based on the actors’ own ideas and by involving the audience.
The performance had a diversified structure and spread out throughout the museum, with “Men in Black” and “Men in White” simultaneously performing on the second and third floors of the Intermediatheque, before eventually intermingling on the stairs joining these two layers. The present video installation is not a screening of diachronic archive footage. Rather, by projecting images on three spots within the exhibition space for the audience to move around freely, we intend to essentially reproduce (or play back) the type of spatiality created by the theatrical performance. When filming a theatrical performance – the essence of which resides in its liveness–, the recorded footage cannot faithfully reproduce theatre itself, and it is not rare that such footage remains unavailable to the audience’s appreciation. The present event, by using theatrical archive footage as a design resource, is an attempt at activating such footage through an innovative creative process at the intersection of museums and theatre, in the form of a video installation.
Except the conceptual presentation distributed during the performance with the help of the audience, there is no script to this theatrical piece. The scene titles and texts used in the video were created after the performance, during the postproduction. These Fragments of Theatrical Reminiscences, along with the conceptual presentation, are available in the Web Catalogue produced for the present event, as well as on the “Play IMT (4)” Event Homepage. Please have a look at them as you watch the video installation.

* On December 22, Thursday, the discussion “Play IMT (5) – Theatrical Thinking by Akira Takayama and Seil Kim” will take place from 18:00 at ACADEMIA.“Play IMT (5)” Event Homepage

Theatrical creation project “Play IMT”
The University Museum, the University of Tokyo and SEAMI collaborate on a theatrical project staged at the JP Tower Museum INTERMEDIATHEQUE. This project is an experiment on theatrical creation within a museum space. While pursuing new possibilities for creative activities in relation to the scientific specimens and museum space proper to the Intermediatheque, we attempt to give birth to new forms of theatrical expression. In this context, and in order to build up the process of theatrical creation in a public form, we regularly hold related events at the Intermediatheque, with all the meanings of “play” as our keyword.